Canon Formation Revisited: Canon and Cultural Production

Abstract

In this paper I propose to discuss what I view as a major aspect in the conception of the role of the canon in regulating culture, namely, the question of how it is related to current cultural production and consumption. I then propose to discuss some aspects of the process of canon formation. The scope of problematization prevailing in the Anglo-American debate about the canon seems to be too predictable and limited as a conceptual framework for a serious historical research (rather than “critique”) into processes of canon formation. Revolving around the question of cultural values, this discourse fails to exceed the limits of the same reductive, normative conception of “high” culture (in the sense of the body of select artifacts), which it basically aspires to challenge. Its commitment to a progressive ideological agenda notwithstanding, this discourse helps reinforcing - rather than revolutionizing - the power of the canon. In the final analysis, this discourse fails to deal with the canon as a general mechanism, indispensable for the organization and evolution of societies. Regarding the first issue, two problems will be discussed, as follows: (1) The question of transitoriness: the fascination with relativism and contingencies of values leads to viewing the canon as entirely negotiable and versatile, far more than it is so in reality. This view underestimates the specific weight of established canons as accumulative, widely shared and persistent cultural reservoirs, which endure the vicissitude of dominant tastes promoted by different groups in different times. As such, the status of the canon is almost irreversibly secured. The formation of the canon is hence a long-term process occurring in addition to the short-term process of shifting trends and legging behind it. (2) The question of generativeness: the nexus usually taken for granted between the valorization of artifacts and their recycling in the cultural market is misleading. Canonicity is independent of whether or not the items serve as generative models for current cultural production. Often, the sanctification of items through canonization rituals suspends the availability of these items as active models for interfering with the actual cultural market. Consequently, the canon operates as a stabilizing mechanism (a cultural “sock-absorber”) in the ongoing cultural battlefield, and may equally invoked, as a source of legitimation, by all of the participating rival groups. Regarding the second issue, it is argued that while all cultural practices have “canonical rules”(in the sense of accepted standards), not all have canons in the full sense of a tangible pantheon. The making of such a pantheon depends on the existence of an autonomous field with authorized consecrating agencies. Therefore, in cases of canon formation in (as yet) “canonless” fields, the canonisers need to be able to act as compatible agents in other, highly canonized fields, so as to borrow models from these field, in order to confer canonicity on the cultural production in their own fields. In all canonizing processes, the canonisers" strategies oscillate between the tendency to consolidate existing canonized repertoire and that of prefiguring a new one and present it as canonical from the outset. Usually, however, the prefiguration of new canonized repertoire comes only late in the process of canon formation, after a prolonged phase of conformity with the existing canon.